Disconnect
by theselittlewords
Summary: One second, they were in love. The next, they were falling apart. Six years down the road, and Spencer is still struggling with her memories and the person she has become. What will fate throw at her next?
1. Cut the Cord

Our words are lies. They twist around us like serpents, constricting our chests and clouding our thoughts with disorder. The addictive poison of fallacy drips from guarded lips, lips that had once been so open and receptive to each other. We stretch and squander the moments no longer made to hold us, darting and flitting through the consequences of time. Even though I cannot dance, I now swing to the song of avoidance. With clumsy feet, I expertly sway across this familiar floor. I have become more intimate with evasion than with her skin and lips and restless tongue.

Confusion seems to be the reoccurring theme as we find ourselves once more placed at a familiar crossroad, the two paths sprawled before us like lounging beasts. Those animals crouch in anticipation of our division, just waiting to swallow us up and withhold us from returning to the comfort of the same circular roads and congruent results.

The tension is tangible, even when the safety of distance prevents the commodity of heated glances and nervous stares. Only voices connect through the silence that is as heavy as night--that overwhelms the chirp of spring crickets and the roar of empty sound--lips pressed to the metal of phones as words are shared, tongues faltering over failing truths and spreading lies. Lies, lies, lies. They scream through the resounding quiet, polluting my thoughts. They surround me, as empty as her hollow laughter that I now hear ringing in my ear. I used to join in with that irresistible display of humor when it hadn't been so hollow, when it had been brimming with ecstasy and shivers of joy, my own laughter unable to deny it company. Now I am confounded by it, my own lips bound and pressed in the grasp of perplexity as I wait for the silence that will surely follow. The resonant quiet comes, a vicious reminder of how graceless our pauses have become, weighted with unease where before they had housed security and comfort.

The beasts slide tongues across waiting lips as I falter through that diseased intermission, finally cracking beneath its weight. Then, my misguided lips are parting, shattering the indelicate glass of our silence with the slander of my tongue.

"Do you still love me?"

I don't know and I hate myself for not knowing, not knowing the answer to the question that has just escaped amidst a volley of deceit, born from my lips to end this frittering jig of indecision. A question so revealing that it will expose our scars and currently festering wounds. A question that might kill us. I feel as if I have just written a sloppy two paragraph conclusion to end an overrated and predictable five hundred page novel. The story could have been much better--that is, if only the author had cared at all about the book's characters and their conflict. That author's pen was as careless as my words are now, careless as my truths that can no longer be cloaked with the falsity of manufactured laughter and acceptance of the pain tugging at my heart.

Those words are met with silence, because the person on the other end of the phone line would rather duck her head in lies than face my verity, would rather continue dribbling through contrived feelings and false attention. And I would rather continue shoving unfitting words inside a five hundred page useless novel that needs a conclusion--that needs to be over--because I, too, am more comfortable when lounging amongst liars. Through and through my veins bleed of deception, even if vulnerable words pushed forth from reluctant lips only moments ago touched upon a truth that I now don't want to hear, don't ever want to hear. Because she's giving me the answer after an excruciating suspension of sound, she's handing it to me through a breath of air that I never want to breathe.

An answer that is truth.

An answer that is painful.

Because this traitorous contradiction that's coming might just be the same one beating in my own bewildered heart.

"I don't know anymore."

And now I'm longing for the lies, I'm thirsting for the poison of her voice and my misconceptions, embraced in the folds of bewilderment. I want to slip back inside our old childhood bed--a bed that is now too small to hold our adult bodies. But its too late. The delicate cobweb of our lies has been brushed aside with a simple slew of words. Now not just uncertainty clings to our floundering and defeated tongues, but fear, because I can feel this slipping away, I can feel her fading and growing bored with my defective novel. And as more truths begin to tumble from our mouths at the splintering of the dam, fear is all I feel--fear and the growing pit of sadness where all our memories lie. What I have started, I cannot stop. The toxicity runs too deep. As we tumble through the patterns of separation, tripping and careening toward an abrupt ending on the wheels of our truths, the disconnect occurs. The single phone line full of knots and ties that bound us together is severed, and I'm feeling the clench of eager jaws around my neck. I feel the ring once wrapped warmly around the finger on my left hand slip bitterly from its residence. I hear the silence pounding in my eardrums, betraying the whir of bedroom lights and the noises of night that are not contained behind my glass windows. I feel the knowing smirks of those two beasts as they approach, taking us with their gloating teeth, holding us where words can no longer reach and skin can no longer brush.

In a single motion, I have been swallowed, and so has she.


	2. When It All Comes Together

_Six years later…_

Fingers slide against warm flesh. Tongues collide and lips brush, tangling and tasting as they wander across exposed skin. I feel her moving beneath me, squirming and needy as I leave a trail of kisses beneath her jaw and along the length of her bared neck. Teeth nip and suck with each press of my parted lips, navigating across the map of a body that has become too familiar to me. I know all the grooves, all the shapes and angles that react to the friction of my touches and the pressure of my lips. I'm trying to lose myself in the mold of that body, wrapping myself in the mechanics of habit as I maneuver along the planes of her skin. I'm trying to fit inside a rhythm that won't exist; trying to dance on a floor that refuses to hold me as I make these motions and twist between the trap of her anxious legs. And as I caress and fondle, as I plant intimacy on her breasts with kneading fingertips and flickering tongue, I'm trying not to let her see what lurks behind the curtain of lying, periwinkle eyes.

I let her feel my heat as I grind my way through her defenses. I allow her the access of my body, of my movements as my stomach glides against hers. My blonde locks are all over her flesh, tickling and sweeping as my fingers reach lower and my lips become sick with the distraction of need. In a flurry of scattered kisses, I'm forgetting the numbness residing in my heart, erasing the accusations that creep in the shadows of my mind as I weave her a tapestry of pleasure.

And all this, just repetition, just a shadow of the dance I am capable of, a glimmer of the insatiable fire that once breathed from my lungs and sparked from roving fingertips. But she has no idea, because this is all she has ever known and felt. To her, this is enough as I brand her with my muted passion. And I feel like I'm lying to her as I continue to spread desire with my strokes, because this isn't enough--this will never be enough.

Perhaps that is why, through the frigidity that has developed in my withering heart, I now feel like a traitor as I slip to the side of her body and reach back up for her waiting lips, enfolded in her grasp, maintaining contact with her skin at all times. Perhaps this is why as my agile legs entwine with one of hers, as my hand hesitates and teases at the brink of its goal, I feel an eminent sickness staining my senses.

I ease my mind into the impending task, forcing my focus to narrow. I forget anything and everything except for the body before me, so ready and desperate for my touch. I selfishly take her, own her, chain her want to my fickle will. Fingers are dipping lower, sliding in between the groove of her thighs. My ears are filled with her sounds. With her intonations and moans, she is sending vibrations through the wall of my impassivity. My heart begins to speed as I breathe her in through kisses that last forever, drawing skin into my mouth to taste her bitter perspiration--perspiration that I have made, pleasure that I have induced. My fingers reach deep inside of her, sliding and slippery as her impatient hips rise to greet my entrance. She's gasping now, panting in time to my movements as my palm grinds against her and fingers curl within throbbing walls. I'm watching her now, observing gray eyes that roll beneath the flutter of eyelids as my hand palpates and presses. One hand claws through her dark velvety tresses, the other eliciting the mounting pleasure between her thighs.

We're set in an inescapable rhythm now, caught in the tow of a current that will drag us to the depths of the Atlantic as my hand continues to fluctuate inside of her. She's rocking with the movement, her entire body tethered to the command of my lissome fingertips as we sink lower and lower, drowning in the waters of our ephemeral communion. We're drinking in this moment, growing drunk on our enmeshment and the circulations of my fingertips. Her chest is heaving with breaths that are barely offered enough time to escape her before they are sucked back in again, ragged and sharp within her lungs. Her hips are bucking, body crawling with impatience as I fill her, as I satisfy her frantic need. I press harder and her spine curls, my muscles tensing and riveted with pain as she clings to the place I am taking her, clutches it with her life in the same way that her tongue now wraps its way around my name.

"_Spencer._"

And suddenly, with a fierce shudder of her lithe and writhing body, she's swimming through the heavens, and I'm suspending her there. I'm holding her up beneath those oppressive waters, watching as her body contorts with fulfillment and her features crease with bliss. I'm her supporting character as her gray eyes roll up into her head and body drifts through the clouds of ecstasy. She stays there for a few heartbeats worth of suspension, her breath lodged somewhere in her throat as the thrill of euphoria works its way through her veins.

And then I'm easing her back down to the solidity of ground, carefully reintroducing a world that is fresh and new and full of vivid sensations. Her breath has returned to starving lungs, ribs rising and falling rapidly as she acclimates to the reality of the bed we lie in. She's so alive and I can see it in her as her head lazily tilts to find me, lips still panting softly, hooded gray eyes meeting with mine as my hand recedes from the memory of her grappling thighs. There is the trace of a smile on her lips, languid and contented as I place a chaste kiss on the closest available skin. My hand reaches to cup her face, fitting around the curves of her cheek as my thumb slides against her skin, and gray eyes are lost to the flicker of lashes. And as my eyes cross the features of her face, confirming the curves that I know like the details of a novel I've read too many times, I'm trying not to recall what they remind me of. I'm trying to forget the face that used to lean into the motions of my rotating thumb, just like she's doing now. And then the bitterness comes and the sickness tickles at the back of my throat, and I'm back to trying not to hate myself for the person I see in her face that is not her, nor can ever be her. I've returned to my attempts at convincing myself that she's not just the next best thing, that she's not just a poor replacement of what is gone from me.

And I'm failing.

I roll onto my back and she takes it as a signal to return the favor I have just given her, to share the shadow of a gift I have offered her that can never make up for the lies that I have fed her and that she has grown fat on. She feels it in my stiffness, and it makes her pause as eyes inebriated with pleasure reach through the film of my distraction. Of course, she misinterprets the tautness of muscles beneath her, and I'm hating her for not knowing me enough to read me, hating her for not capturing the signals I'm trying to send her.

But how can I hate her for believing in a mask I've worked so hard to create?

"Spencer, I love you."

I'm wishing for her confidence, now. I'm wishing that I didn't have to spit those three little words back at her when all I'll be feeding her is another lie. Most of all, I'm sick with the memory of when I never had to lie with those words, when I longed to breathe them into the recesses of night and embrace myself in their content. I hate the way they've become meaningless on my tongue when they used to hold the world in their lilt. I wonder at how long it's been since I've spoken them with true feeling and intention.

"I love you, too." I don't even reward her with the sound of her own name as I throw it back to her.

Naively, she believes me. Stupidly, I can see the flicker of gaiety in gray eyes as she repositions her body and prepares to follow through on previous intentions. But I brace against her, I tense away from the way she's trying to fit her body into mine--a place it will never fit. To her bewilderment, I'm effortlessly disentangling us as if we were never entwined to begin with, and I flinch from the hurt that is so visibly crawling its way into her heart. I just can't help it--there are only so many lies a person can tell.

As our bodies separate, I'm avoiding her, avoiding eyes that will be disappointed and accepting. I'm avoiding her painful tolerance, because this isn't the first time I've done this. This isn't the first time I've left her sleeping with only the covers to keep her company. As she eases sullenly back into the comfort of the bed--_our_ bed--I feel as if a mile might as well have been poured between us.

I glance at her through the strides of my evasion, drinking in the view of her lonely body as, with the hesitation of remorse, I lean over to her across that mile. I'm brushing lips against her ear and tickling her with my breath as I whisper, "I'm sorry, Carmen." As if those words of apology could ever pay retribution for the lies I've gorged her with. As if any words could ever make up for the pain I've caused.

And then I'm gone. I'm picking up the clothes scattered in the darkness of our apartment floor and dressing my naked flesh. I'm concluding this moment, stepping out of this particular chapter to leave Carmen alone in a night that is more willing to hold her than I am. All the while, I feel her eyes on me, and I wish that they could hate me, could make this burden of guilt easier to bear. But those eyes don't hate me. They simply observe somberly as I finish clothing my naked body. They follow me as I walk out our door and shut it quietly behind me.

And then I'm walking to my Honda Accord to settle into the embrace of familiar seats. As my hands are reacquainting themselves with the shift and steering wheel, I'm putting the car into drive and skidding across the parking lot to mingle with empty roads, roads void of Carmen and memories I don't care to think about. Roads lacking of certain other hazel eyes that I'm desperately trying to forget. And as the engine predictably churns and purrs at the pressure of my foot, the outside air filling depraved lungs and clearing Carmen's scent from my inundated nostrils, I'm cursing myself for being a liar, hating myself for being a hypocrite, and wishing for the millionth time that I hadn't let Carmen, with her replicated features and hunger for my lies, enter into my life.


	3. We All Fall Down

Everyone dreams of love. Even when boys are gross and girls have cooties, there blossoms in every mind the desire for that ultimate and absolute breach of heart. Innocent and ignorant, as children we search for the cure for the innate emptiness in our souls, blindly seeking to fill a yawning gap we don't yet comprehend. As reckless youths we form alliances and foster bonds, quickly and unwittingly--or perhaps not so unwittingly--filing through potential suitors for that one person that might take our breath away, that might kill loneliness with their smile, that will kiss away all the troubles in the world with a single sweep of tender lips. There is the search for laughter, for pleasure, for companionship. There is the struggle to find the infamous 'one,' the single person that will be sewn into our hearts and minds and remain there indefinitely.

At times, we become frustrated. We become aggravated at the ambiguity of our passion, failing to find the outlet through which it can foster and multiply. We wander and founder, our hearts growing frigid with lack of comfort to keep it warm. We are less than nothing then as our footsteps stumble along the path of solitude, less than the most unfortunate beast on the planet that does not hold the complete capacity for understanding that which he does not possess. Even that pathetic beast, though, feels a sorrowful flicker of what he lacks, of the loneliness that has mantled a mysteriously aching heart.

I mourn for those aching hearts. I pity those who have foundered, who have abandoned the path of fulfillment and given into the much more tangible love of themselves and material goods. But at least they, with their empty passion, never knew the kiss of fulfillment before they deserted the vagueness of their hearts for the solidity of mortal passions. At least they hold only a glimmer of comprehension of the heat missing from their veins.

I, with my rendered heart and lying tongue, am not so blessed. I have once known the heat of love. And to have tasted that visceral flame and have it extinguished is to forever be left wanting. No other can measure up to that flame, can breathe it upon a heart that has withdrawn into the recesses of ice shelves in Antarctica. Forever after is to be reminded of what is gone, of what once made you full and now has left you less than empty. Any forged substitute, any forced attempt to fill the place that has been left empty only serves to make the chasm deeper, to rend the gap wider until the entire being is lost in a revolting pit of inescapable misery.

Until I met her, until I met _Ashley_, I had never sampled the flavor of love. Until I met her, the abyss within me was nothing but a fascinating mystery, something that I felt, but was not fully cognizant of. It was like seeing something out of my peripheral vision only to look and find nothing there. I could sense it there, glimpse it yawning from the corner of my eye, but I never knew it wholly until after Ashley had casually poured herself into my life. And once she had, once I had become fixated upon the warmth that emerged from her closeness to my heart, intoxicated with the sensation some like to chain within the confines of the word love, there was no turning back. My days as an oblivious child, as a rash and belligerent youth, were over.

I have come to believe the world functions on love, around love. For without it, without love, what else is there in life when loneliness dominates? What are we except mechanisms in a massive factory, completing the same acts without thought or cause? We get up, we eat, we work, we sleep, we strive for power and success and satisfaction on an indefinite and ungratifying social ladder.

Love interrupts. Love gives us cause. Love gives us our malfunctions and our drive. Love turns this world from a mathematical equation, restrained within its own proof and solution, into a plethora of possibilities and desires.

Love is Ashley, forever _my_ Ashley, stolen from me by an independent heart and free-willed mind that I chose to embrace. Perhaps chose is too light a word, though, for how can one ever choose love? No, rather, love chooses us, ties us together whether we are willing or not, just as I was tied to Ashley those many years ago. So many years ago, I almost question its existence, wondering if perhaps in my romanticisms of love, I have dreamed up her place in my heart. I wonder if maybe, as many may do when left wounded by the arrow of such intensity, I am only in love with the shadow of the girl with hazel eyes and chestnut hair.

Or maybe, just maybe, that love was too real. Maybe that love consumed me. And maybe that love still plagues me now, six years and a college degree later, as I address a keypad that is more home to me than my passionless apartment. Maybe the lack of that heat is all I feel as the door opens to this apartment, and in strides Carmen with her stormy gray eyes and sweeping, seal-brown bangs.

I can feel Carmen approaching. Like an anvil cloud, she has entered the room, and I know that a storm—her storm—is on the verge of breaking. It's rumbling and threatening, growling with each step she takes across the maroon carpet of our apartment floor—the same storm that's been breaking for the past two or three or twenty-six months that I've been with this girl.

My fingers are flying across my laptop's keyboard, trying to remain oblivious and avoidant, dancing across the letters and coaxing them to mix and mingle into fluid sentences and paragraphs. She's setting down her leather briefcase, stepping around her favorite easel and collection of paints. I can feel her coming closer, looming behind me, but still I can't tear myself away from my words, can't leave this world that holds more truth for me than my reality. I'm clinging to it as her fingers brush across my shoulders, easing along tense muscles, sliding around until her arms have clasped me in a loose embrace. And then words are coming from her mouth, words that completely wreck any brittle train of thought I had left, ripping me from my world to return to one contaminated with my deceit. Words that usually would not be falling from lips as coarse as hers. Words that only one person can ever, _ever_, be allowed to voice so warmly in my ear.

"Hey baby."

A flurry of wild taps and clicks and then… silence. Dead silence. The kind of silence that's so loud it burns your ears. I feel trapped within her arms, nauseated and dizzy with her presence.

She _kn__ows_ I hate it when she calls me that. She _knows_ I hate it when she interrupts me when I'm writing, when I'm working on transforming words into a sellable entity. She's testing me. She's inching both of us closer to the brink of torrential rains and lightening and hurricane winds.

"Carmen." The way I say her name could freeze the entire Spartan army. And she feels it. She feels the chill creeping up her body, wrapping around her, encompassing her.

My fingers are hovering above my keyboard, eyes blazing past an illuminated screen and words that are suddenly untouchable and foreign. If I were a wolf, my lips would be drawn and hackles raised. A growl would be vibrating in my throat. I almost wonder if she sees that mental image now as her arms slip from their post around my stiffened shoulders, feet paddling backwards as she gets ready to release the first strike of electrical energy.

Here it comes.

"God, Spencer, what is wrong with you? Am I not allowed to show a little affection?" I don't have to look at her to know that she's standing there, chest expanding with the elevation of her anger, fists clenched at her side. I don't have to see her to know that her muscles are quivering with the need to release these hoarded emotions, that her gray eyes are slits of accusation.

Ah, yes. This is the Carmen I know so well. This is the girl with the angry eyes and the vicious smile.

And this is now the retribution for my culmination of lies.

I'm turning in my comfortable leather chair that is suddenly not so comfortable, swiveling around so that blue can connect with gray. I'm moving to face her anger, to let it beat in resonant waves across my body. And it feels good, because this is what I deserve. This is what I should be getting, every second of every day.

"I don't understand it, Spencer, I don't. Half the time I feel like I'd be better off sleeping with a corpse! At least then I'd know why they never look at me, why they don't respond when I try to show them even the slightest bit that I care!"

I close my eyes, savoring the lash of her words. She's worked herself up now, feet wearing a familiar pattern into the carpet as she marches around the room. I open my eyes again just in time to see one of her hands flash out, stiff and sudden as it sends brushes and palettes containing her paint, her colors and inspiration, flying.

She pauses. Daggers are duller than her eyes are now. Her ribs are heaving with pants as she stands, shoulders squared, never faltering in her upward climb toward the climax of her fury.

"Are you just going to sit there? Say nothing? Do you even care?" Her voice is low and it sets off alarms inside my head, warning sirens that I blatantly ignore. I remain silent.

She's in motion then, walking toward me, the muscles in her arms tensing and releasing. I'm blankly captivated by the scene unfolding before me. It's almost as if I'm watching us from another person, observing with detachment as she reaches to grip either armrest of the chair I'm seated in. I can taste her breath on my lips, her face mere inches from my own. She's staring into me, staring through me, trying to rummage through my broken components to find some spark of recognition, of concern.

But she finds nothing there.

And then I'm falling, crashing through space as those arms that hold surprising strength upset the chair I'm seated in. I'm on the floor, pain that I don't feel shooting through my body as I lay in a tangle of metal and leather and disheveled limbs. And before I can even struggle to right myself, before I can gather the strength to extricate myself from the mess I've fallen into, there is the resounding beat of Carmen's receding footsteps. There is the conclusive slam of our wooden door. And then I'm just lying there, vacantly depicting the patterns of our ceiling, defeated and empty and very much alone.


	4. This Is Liberty

I'm not really sure how long I've felt this way—this disconnection. Part of me thinks that it began with the severance of a phone line six years ago. Or maybe it occurred just before that, when a familiar boy was caught sliding from the residence of Ashley Davies, his lips bruised with kissing and eyes hooded and arrogant. Another part of me believes it was always there, that Ashley was the connection, the only connection, and I lost that connection when we divided. All I really know is that it exists, that there is a yawning emptiness where once was fullness and contentment. It lives inside of me; a breach that separates me from joy and shields me from reality.

I see it sometimes—the joy. I admire it just as someone might admire animals in a zoo they haven't visited in years. I'm looking at those animals through the glass of their enclosure, fingers pressed up against the barrier that keeps me from joining them in their perfectly contrived world. I'm longing for the comfort of their enclosure, cursing the freedom that has left me cold and unfulfilled.

I watch the joy. I observe as happiness brims in eyes creased with laughter, tumbling from untroubled lips and careless tongue, evident in loving caresses and gentle whispers born beneath the folds of intimacy. I see it in the eyes of those around me, not quite as much as I witness misery, but I see it there, nonetheless.

I see it in the couple sitting in the booth over my left shoulder; their hands clasped across a table, love spilling from the connection of their eyes. I see it in the eyes of the man who just walked in, his shoulders square and strong with his buoyancy, chin raised in a subtle show of pride. His step is a dance across the wooden floorboards as opposed to a shuffling walk, arms swinging powerfully at his sides as he approaches.

He's sliding onto a stool three seats from mine, fingers playing across the ledge of the bar and striking through the air as he captures the attention of the Boar's Head bartender. And she stops drying her glass, rag caught in the distortion of the item as her head snaps in the direction of this newcomer, as if her green eyes are as captivated and envious of his presence as I am. She's setting the glass down distractedly, her attention suddenly and inevitably tied to this man as a satisfied voice comes pouring out of upturned lips, requesting a Jack and Coke. And she's asking his name, asking about him, plucking details from his willing tongue, weaving her way into his story as if she has to maintain the connection with her voice, even while her hands and eyes are sidetracked with the task of crafting his drink.

And I'm just watching, ever the dark observer drowning in her mug of ale, slightly inebriated with misery, the burden of my disconnection birthing far more than a three-stool gap between this foreign man and me. His eyes barely glazed over me upon his entrance, as if I were a growth to be ignored, a sickness to be avoided.

And maybe he's right.

I bring my mug to my lips, another tasteless swallow of the liquid sliding down my throat to join the others that have already made their warm residence in my belly. I watch the man from the corner of my eye, viewing him from the angle of sideways glances. I can tell he sees me. There really aren't that many people in the Boar's Head on a weeknight. He refuses to look at me.

He's staring into the grooves of the counter before him, hands clasped around his drink. He's bringing it to his smiling lips, tasting it as the bartender stares on in a not-so-clandestine way, the disregarded rag from before hanging limply from her suspended hand. He nods his approval after the drink has retracted from his mouth, throwing appreciation to the bartender with his blue eyes and easy smile. Her whole body relaxes, a sigh slipping from her lips as a look of subdued satisfaction coming to grace her features. It's almost as if in supplying him with a simple drink and determining his identity, she might have gained an ounce of his contentment. I wonder if maybe that's why she's here, if maybe she believes that she can buy joy from her customers in the terms of small favors and pleasant words.

Maybe I should become a bartender.

I'm trying to ignore the man, attempting to get lost in the brown of my liquid and the condensation that's collecting on the glass. I'm disregarding the nagging sensation that propels my eyes to flit in his direction, as if he were someone important that my mind should be aware of, that my eyes need to remember. Instead I'm watching as the cold water slides like teardrops down the contours of my glass, leaving a trail in their wake and pooling at the bottom. It reminds me of the teardrops that should be sliding down my face, that should be streaked across my skin. The ones that should be flowing from the pain Carmen inflicted on me, from the pain I've inflicted on her. I don't have those tears, though. I lost my tears six years ago.

Unfortunately, envy and curiosity lead to a certain amount of involvement and inability to avoid situations that would best be left alone, however. I'm looking in his direction again, and this time he's looking back. I see some teeth in his smile. His dull blue eyes are piercing right through me.

"Hey there. I'm Josh."

I'm trying really hard not to care, but to say so would be a lie, and my lies have run dry for the time being. A river of alcohol now runs through that particular empty bed.

"Spencer." I hope my voice isn't as deep and languid as it sounds to my ears. I'm afraid that it is. I'm afraid that he's already reading my life story, that it's boldly displayed through eyes that were never very good at hiding emotion.

As if the admission of my name were enough a reason for him to share a connection with me that cannot exist, he's lifting up his drink, relocating, shifting closer to me with a certainty that makes me a little angry. I liked the distance. I didn't want his cheery face any closer.

But I guess that's just more lies, because there's something about him that keeps pricking at my spine, and the closer he is, the easier he is to examine.

"So, what are you doing in Boar's Head this lovely evening?" I'm convinced his smile must be the product of a facelift gone wrong, but I don't see any telling marks, and it's too soft to be anything but genuine. The way he says the name of the place, I immediately know he's not from around here.

"Ask the same of you. Don't know your face." My words are articulate, although curt and wanting of coherency.

The smile tips for the briefest of moments while his eyes focus on me for what feels like the first time. Before the next words even have a chance to come out of his elegant mouth, I know he's in love.

"I'm here with my fiancée. We're moving from New York and looking for a place to live." His eyes become what can only be described as reminiscent, hand bringing his drink to his lips as he mulls over his upcoming thoughts over a sip. The drink resumes its residence on the table. "My fiancée insisted on coming to Maryland. Says she's always wanted to live here." His smile broadens. My expression becomes perplexed. I feel as if a thought, an important one, just entered my mind, but it fled as soon as it settled. I feel as if I should have some intelligent response to that, but my mouth cannot conjure any words. My shoulders lift imperceptibly in a shrug as I nod to him—the only response I can muster. My head moves a little too much. He's laughing. I would like the sound—his laugh is very pleasant; the bartender is smiling over at us with what might be jealousy—except for some reason I find it jarring.

"That's nice." I'm trying to be cordial.

"Yes, I suppose it is." Again the reminiscent smile of adoration. He looks back over at me. "So what about you? You have a loved one? You live here?"

He seems like he genuinely wants to know. Only someone who really is happy genuinely wants to know about the fulfillment of others, mostly because they themselves have already been fulfilled. Of course, as soon as the other person opens their mouth, they usually become distracted and bored, because hearing them is like revisiting a place they never want to see again. They realize their mistake and immediately want to return to the focus on their own contentment. This is why joy and misery never mix. You can have one, or the other, but never both.

I steady myself before I speak. Sobriety can be a tricky thing in these circumstances.

"Yes and yes. Lived here since college. I love it. Hope you will too." I somehow skip over mention of Carmen, merely acknowledging that she does exist. I congratulate myself on that brief mention, at least.

I haven't given him much to go on and I think he's catching on to the fact that I'm not in the mood for a conversation. He seems pretty smart. Through the haze of his happiness, he can read into my words pretty well. A little too well.

"I hope we will." I'm not oblivious to his firm use of the word 'we.' It almost makes me wonder if something else is there. It almost makes me think that maybe, in my fuzzy melancholy, I slightly misjudged his candor.

There's no time for further inquisition, though. He's picking up his drink and finishing it, removing his attention from me as he slaps some money down on the table and signals to the bartender. As if he even needed to signal. His movements are too grand for the Boar's Head, too large for Oakland, Maryland. I doubt he'll last long.

The bartender's movements are anxious as she comes over.

Josh is now disengaging from me. He's slipping out of his stool, pushing it in against the wood of the bar counter as the period to his wordy sentence. He turns to me for what seems to be a final time, conclusion written in every facet of his movements.

"Well, I suppose I'll be seeing you around, Spencer. Nice to meet you." He's offering me a farewell, quirking up his smile an extra degree for my benefit.

"You too. Josh." My disjointed sentence is the only thing I can offer in parting. And then he's turning on his heel, removing his confident shoulders and proud chin from this miserable bar. The light follows him out the door, and with him gone, all the bar is left with is silence and a bartender that's frowning as she attacks a series of glasses for what could be the fifth time.

My lips are reacquainting themselves with glass and alcohol.


	5. Because I'm No Good

It's funny how everything seems bigger and less important when you're drunk. Everything can matter and not matter at the same time. Reality and fantasy converge. Life—existence—becomes a blend of color, a useless mixture of lights and words and sounds. Everything just falls together, like a wrecked line of carefully arranged dominoes. The pieces just give way, all leaning into one another until there's just a misconstrued pile of black dots on white rectangles. All of the original dots and numbers and figures are there; there's even some complex and very logical mathematical equation that can explain how each piece interacted with one another to land where it did.

But it doesn't really matter. In the end, those numbers aren't important. There doesn't need to be a rational explanation of the how and the why of the collision of the dominoes. There doesn't need to be a mathematical equation or a calculation at all. Because in the end, it's just a pile of dominoes. It's just a beautiful construction of chaos. It's just a bunch of white rectangles, each with their own little black dots, resting on one another, coming together and interlacing to form the epitome of simplicity. It's just a game, a silly pastime. It's assembling a line, a life, a world, just to watch it mingle and decompose.

Because that's what it's like to be drunk. The simplest things become the most complicated. The most complicated things become the simplest. And none of it really matters at all.

Everything just _is_.

That's how I feel now, sitting in the belly of my friendly Accord, stroking the too familiar wheel with the windows down and the wind hitting my face. I don't care that I'm driving before the warmth of alcohol has had the chance to desert my veins. I don't care that the white lines and reflective dots are speeding by, the asphalt devoured by my hungry engine. I don't care that the road is empty, that the clock is closer to sunrise than sunset, that my phone is nowhere to be found.

I. Don't. Care.

All I feel is the wind rushing through empty space, the subtle contours in the road that argue with the tread of old tires and even older suspension. All I feel is the grip of the steering wheel, gyrating to the touch of my moving fingers, urging the car to slink down the road and in between the boundaries of the white dashes and the countryside. There's no music, only the melodic growl of engine, the breathy song of air as it whispers past my ears and tangles in my hair. And there's no light, only the shine of lonely headlights and the flicker of stars that try desperately to pierce their blanket of clouds. There's only my car on empty roads, my mind made aware with toxicity, my foot caressing the pedal and pushing the car forward through a town made silent and sad by the darkness. There's only my thoughts in this vacant night, cupped and held by the hands of loneliness. There's only my memories, amplified and inescapable, swept and teased by the breeze invading my car.

And through it all, I'm somehow seeing him. I'm seeing shallow blue eyes and sandy brown hair. I'm hearing a confident voice, a voice made light with affection. I'm seeing a subtle smile that never leaves and an expression that compels and convinces and believes. I'm seeing Josh. I'm remembering the way he holds his drink, the way his lips move and tell a story, the way his actions spell the happiness that he has. Happiness that I have not. Happiness that I lost long ago.

Even through the incoherent bliss that is the alcohol in my system, I cannot stop the envy. I cannot halt the deep inhalation of frigid air that is meant to cleanse that envy, or maybe fill the void that jealousy can never fill, the void that jealousy always failed to fill. The void that was left when jealousy was all I had, when contempt owned the blue of my eyes and the discerning and disapproving tilt of my smile. The jealousy that was born out of loving a freedom, of touching a bird and expecting it to stay caged. Because that bird could never be caged. That bird was never supposed to be caged. But I tried to anyway, I tried to grasp air in my fist and breathe it into my lungs. And in settling the metal bars around that golden canary, I lost her. I lost that bird to the sky, to the clouds that could hold her far better than I ever could.

And now I'm remembering why Spencer doesn't drink. Now I'm remembering why alcohol hasn't touched my lips in a very long time. Because it doesn't help. It doesn't ease the pain or erase the past. It illuminates the truths and the lies together and mixes them into the ugly painting that has become my life. Within blurry frames, it returns to me my memories and my tears. Except they're not mine. They're the alcohol's. They're what the alcohol has

plucked from my mind and contorted. The alcohol is merely an intermediary, a false and flimsy bridge that tries to connect me in ways that can't be connected. The alcohol is just another substance that's going to leave me even emptier when it's gone.

I'm feeling it begin to bleed out, now. I'm feeling the first stubborn kicks of sobriety, clawing at my gut and hammering at my traitorous mind. The road is disappearing. The road is fading into another memory, replaced with the white lines and yellow blocks of a parking lot and the knowledge that the continuation of this narrative will continue in the time it takes to reach my door. What felt like an infinite five minute drive has been concluded and the steps up to my apartment await an introduction. The road can't save me now. The armrests of my car can't reach around and hold me against the weight of my troubles. The night is no longer my hero and the wind no longer my song. I'm on my own, grounded in a life that was never meant to happen—a life that titled into tragedy the moment that I clung too tightly to adversity. The moment that I nestled too deeply in my enclosure and tried to trap the wild into domestication.

And my mind isn't making sense again, if it ever was to begin with.

But that's alright, because none of it matters. Not this, not my incoherent thoughts, not the girl waiting behind my apartment door, not my mistakes or the memories that refuse to part with the backs of my eyelids.

I'm walking away from the body of my car. I'm shutting the door on my influenced night drive and gasping my last deep breaths of dark air. I'm steadying myself, feeling the indolent pound of my heart within its frosty cavern as my feet swing up the concrete steps to my door. And I don't even take out my key as the wood of that door faces me. I don't try to fit notched edges into the keyhole and fiddle with it until it tricks the mechanism into unhinging. Because I know it's unlocked. Because I know that a certain someone has purposely left it unlocked, that she has been waiting on the other side of this barrier all night, waiting for the moment that my heels will step through the threshold and stand frozen in an apartment that is too small to and too large for the both of us.

And as I turn that golden knob, as I step through the door and secure it gingerly behind me, I don't even have to look at her to know her exact position and thoughts. I don't even have to run my eyes over her in the dim light of our room to see her eyes addressing a canvas, fingers of her left hand clutching the frame as if she were convinced it could speak to her, right hand delicately poised and suspended with a paintbrush doused in color. I don't have to see the circles underneath her eyes to know she's miserable and weary with regret. I don't have to ask to know that she's pouring her heart out to that canvas from her perch on a wooden stool, stretching her emotions across that empty parchment and sharing with it a communion that I never could. She's crying through her paints and bristles, mourning and apologizing through her swipes that tear at the perfection of vacuity. And I get this—I do get this about her. I get the way she communicates with her paints and strokes, the way she expresses her life through images her ministrations have conjured. In this, she and I are the same. We are both artists, both manipulators of common colors and words.

And it's a beautiful thing.

I'm standing there, waiting for her now. She's lingering in her actions, savoring in the arrival of the moment she's awaited for hours. She's careful, as if by moving too quickly, too abruptly, she might break its frailty and again shatter the pieces we're about to try to piece together for the countlessth time.

Another brush of color finds its way onto her canvas.

I'm watching her, following the way her fingers grasp the tool, my own fingers unconsciously finding each other in contemplation. One might say I'm almost withdrawn as I accommodate Carmen's delay, but my eyes are far too direct in their glare, my mind too familiar with Carmen's manners and characteristics.

I'm patient as she sets her tools down, left hand leaving its station so that both hands can wipe against the splattered apron she wears. She's getting up, eyes still refusing to meet my own, arms rising to lift the apron from over her head to be slung across her now vacant seat. And she's walking toward me, eyes sweeping along the dirty carpet, trailing across the floor as the only movement in my body becomes the thudding of my still languid heart. She's standing before me, so close that I can taste her breathe, pick out the details of her cheeks and chin, see the

definition of her lashes and the lock of hair that's obstructing her vision. I can feel the barrier between us as we stand before each other, so firm. It's like a cement wall. I think she feels it too. I think she's hating that barrier, wishing she could do something about it.

Tentatively, my hand reaches out to feel that obstruction. As I touch it, test it, I find that I'm not too weak to scale its boundaries, even if it's just for a moment. And with some relief, I don't really feel like it's a lie when I reach out all the way across the expansion of that barrier, fingers grazing her skin, sweeping the nearly black locks from her sight. I don't feel guilty as her gray eyes finally find mine, eyes usually so fiery and proud now only quizzical and cautious. Eyes full of apology. Eyes full of pain. They're asking for permission, pleading for my nearness. And suddenly I'm stepping through that barrier instead of just stretching across it, giving myself to her as my arms open up to accept her. She's coming into me, entering the comforting ring of my arms. I'm wrapping around her, holding her inside of me as her cheek presses against my shoulder. I'm keeping her grounded as her arms cling to me, fingers grasping the fabric of my shirt, grabbing onto me as if I might fall away from her, as if she's afraid she's the one who might fall away. But I won't let her fall. I keep her here, with me. I give her everything, because that's what she needs, because I'm what she needs. Even though she doesn't fit where I hold her, I keep her there anyway. I embrace her and let her fears and hopes and failures slip from her shoulders. And in that moment, for the briefest of breaths, I see clearly. I think I might love her. I think I might feel an ember that's fallen from a much greater flame. It's flickering and weak and unfulfilling, but it's there. And selfishly, I'm wanting her to want me, to need me, to love me, even if it's all in futility. I need her to feel those things.

And I'm understanding why Carmen is clinging to me. I'm understanding that to her, this is the inferno. To her, this is everything. She doesn't know what it's like to soar; she only knows what it's like to glide, but she can be happy with this because it's all she's felt. And right now, I'm giving her the wood to keep her fire alive; I'm giving her the means to glide. Because at least that's better than running along the ground with only dreams of life and flight. That's better than darkness and death. That's better than unfamiliarity and loneliness.

She's pulling back from me now, leaving the protective circle of my arms. I let her go to arm's length, fingers moving to clasp her shoulders so that she can't leave me altogether, not yet. She's not ready to leave me yet.

"Spencer."

We're staring into each other's eyes. The way her tongue slides over my name makes a shiver creep down my spine. I somehow feel exposed.

"Carmen."

I think my own voice just elicited the same reaction, unless that hitch in her breathing was imagined. We're too close to hide from each other now.

"Spencer, I'm so sorry. So, so sorry." Her voice is soft, whispered. She's breathing out her apology to me, asking me to breathe it in.

I reach to pull her into another embrace, but I can feel the pressure of her touch on my hips, stranding me where I am, keeping me from her. I'm left with nothing but my voice as my support, nothing but the sounds produced by my own vocal chords to convey my meaning.

"You have nothing to apologize for, Carmen. You were right and we both know it. I'm the one who should be apologizing."

And now all those old, treacherous feelings are returning. I think I'm creeping into my old character, returning to my own self-loathing as more words fall from my lips. We shouldn't be apologizing to each other. We shouldn't feel the need to say these things. Love doesn't require apologies, love only requires itself. And now we're entering the realm of what isn't said, but of what is silently spoken. We're trying to read the expressions that lay beneath our words. We're back to fumbling and guessing, and the glaze of purity we admired for those precious seconds has been lost. My hands are slipping from her shoulders and her fingers are slipping from my hips.

"I'm sorry I'm so cold."

_I'm sorry I don't love you like I should._

I'm only looking at her, looking into her, because I'm forcing myself to. The guilt is closing in.

"I'm sorry I hurt you."

_I wish I could make you love me._

"You didn't hurt me, Carmen. It's okay."

_I hurt you. And it's definitely not okay._

Her eyes waver from mine, fingers coming to brush against my cheek. I don't move, merely watching the expressions on her face as she follows the curves of my cheekbones and jaw. It's not until my face is held in between her gentle hands and she has taken a step closer that she begins to speak again.

"I love you so much, Spencer."

_I hate that I love you._

I lean through the inch that separates our lips, tasting her on my tongue as my mouth molds against hers. It's a bittersweet kiss, a kiss of light affection and mourning. I pull back, but our lips still brush as I speak, as I offer her my words, my conciliation.

"I love you, too."

_I wish I could love you more. I wish I could forget her._

And then we're lost to each other. The moment has slipped beneath us. No more words fall from our lips as I take hold of her, grasp her, walk her back until her knees are bent with the protest of the bed. And I'm pushing her onto the sheets, shedding my clothes as my lips refuse to part from hers. She's already lost her clothes, flesh exposed to my touch. And as we fall beneath the sheets, slipping out of the shift of partial truths and into the gown of passion, we forget the barriers. We forget that once more, a wall is very much present between us. We forget that we will never be able to completely scale that wall together and reach the Eden on the other side. We ignore that we're just pretending and, instead, lose ourselves to the lies.

_I can't forget her. I never can._


End file.
